


Lines Holding Fast

by icarus_chained



Series: Space Electric [7]
Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Alternate Universe - Space, Artificial Intelligence, Choices, Freedom, Gen, Loyalty, Space Opera, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-24
Updated: 2012-11-24
Packaged: 2017-11-19 09:08:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/571604
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icarus_chained/pseuds/icarus_chained
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Seventh in the <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/series/26507">Space Electric</a> series. More a small interlude.</p>
<p>Nick Fury & Meroe. In the aftermath of Tony's revelations, Commander Fury asks the questions that need asking, when loyalties may be divided.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lines Holding Fast

**Author's Note:**

> ... This is a strange addition. Marbleglove asked for a SHIELD pilot and AI being comforting with each other, and what you get instead is ... Nick Fury and Meroe, _possibly_ obliquely comforting each other, in the aftermath of hard choices. Because my brain is weird, yes?

Nick took a deep breath, clasping his hands lightly together behind his back. Straightening the spine. Old habits, and all that shit. Through the void-proof glass in front of him, in the dim silence of the for'ard rec room, three of the eighteen ships that surrounded them were visible. All ex-Hydra, drifting serenely, too distant for the odd sections amidships to reveal their darker purposes. Too distant to realise what they used to be.

"Meroe," he said, quietly. A small, white smile flashing in the darkness, rueful and fierce. "A private word, if you don't mind?"

"... Commander," came the soft, impassive voice of their AI. Well, impassive save for the odd note of caution. "When you say private ... my pilot?"

Nick paused. Considered that. "Don't block her if she comes looking," he decided, eventually. "But it's you I want to speak to. What you want her to hear is up to you."

Meroe, after only a fractional pause, dismissed that. "There is nothing Maria cannot hear, for my part," he said, slowly. "Commander ... the secrets that were kept from you ..."

"Yeah," Nick said. Smiling grimly in the dimness, listening to that watching silence. "You able to answer questions now?"

Which was dirty tactics, because it wasn't as though the AI were the only agents who had secrets from previous lives hanging over them. It wasn't as though there weren't things Nick himself had seen, and done, and promised to forget, that would never see even the light of a SHIELD file. It was dirty tactics. But it had to be done.

"... Any you ask, sir," Meroe answered, and there was dignity to it, quiet and sad. The shame and grief of a conflict of loyalties, and the dignity of standing to answer for it.

Nick had a sudden flash, then, of other interviews. Other quiet talks, over the ghosts of dead planets, and battlefields that had necessitated the choosing of sides when there could be no clean answer. SHIELD's duty was to protect the Alliance from outside threats, and to keep the peace within the Alliance. Not to fight the wars that sprung up between planets. SHIELD had to hold the line between sides. Even ... when there were those in its ranks who had been born on one side or the other. Even when the ships they shot down were family, even when the planets they blockaded had, at one point, been home. 

The only clean fights were against the outside enemies. Hydra, split from the Alliance so long ago. The other, stranger, more deadly threats that came from uncharted space. And SHIELD fought those fights too, yes, but most of them ... If you wanted to fight for your world, and your world alone, you signed up for the PlaneSecs. If you joined SHIELD ... chances were, sooner or later, you were going to have to make a harder choice.

And in the aftermath of those choices, there was really only one question that mattered.

"Why did you choose SHIELD?" he asked, expressionlessly. Watching the pinpricks of light that were distant spaceships, and a battle almost fought. "Stark, his AI, they're your family. You've kept their secrets. But when it came down to it, you chose SHIELD." He paused, careful to let nothing slip into his voice. "I need to know why. Fleet Commander Meroe."

Meroe didn't answer, for a long moment. A dark, empty silence, while Nick simply watched his own reflection, and waited. And then ...

"Because I chose this service," the AI said, softly. "I could have left, had I wished. We are allowed. But I chose this service. I took the oath, if only in the privacy of my mainframe. I served beside my crew. I gave my promise to protect them, to serve them to the best of my ability." He paused, careful and heavy. "An enemy appeared, sir, and threatened the safety of my crew. I could not allow that. Not even when the enemy was the maker I loved."

Nick ... closed his eyes. Smiled, a humourless little twist in the darkness and the silent orbits of distant lights. "And when the enemy is one of those you've sworn to protect?" he asked, softly. Almost absently. "If the enemy was one of the fleet AIs? One of your crew? If the enemy was your pilot?" 

Because, in the end, there were no clean fights, were there? And he shouldn't ask Meroe. The answer was already good enough, already enough to pass. This was more than dirty tactics, it was pointless. It was cruelty. One step at a time. One broken promise at a time. And maybe this one would be lucky, and not have to break anything.

He shouldn't have asked Meroe. But Meroe answered, nonetheless. Soft and quiet, and strangely old. 

"If you placed my pilot and my maker beside each other," the AI told him softly, "and promised to kill only one of them, I could not choose between them. Not for love. But if you asked me to choose between either one, and the oath I took, the service I promised ... I would choose my service, sir." 

He paused, as though gathering himself, and Nick found himself turning slightly. Listening, with a strange intensity, for what would come next.

"I am a warship AI in the service of SHIELD," Meroe finished carefully. Thoughtfully. "And I am that because I chose to be. Because it was a choice I thought worth making, and a choice I think worth answering for. For so long as that service is something I believe in ... I will continue making that choice. Even in the face of something I love."

"... Why?" Nick asked. Distantly curious. Oddly hopeful, almost despite himself. "Why?" he asked, because why not, why shouldn't he, when the answer was freely offered.

"Because choices mean nothing unless you answer for them," the AI said simply. "And ... I want my choices to mean something. Sir. I want them ... to be real."

... Yeah, Nick thought, distantly. Don't we all. In the end ... don't we all.

"... I won't say well done," he said, at last. Staring distantly out past the drifting of ships. "You risked the lives of those you loved for us, and that's not something you fucking say 'well done' for. I won't say thank you, because you did your job, protected your crew, and I goddamn _hope_ that's what service means around here, or Stark is the least of our problems. And I won't say you made the right choice, because that's not my decision, and only you get to say if what you did was worth it. But for what it's worth ... I, personally, am real fucking glad you made the choice you did. And I'm guessing quite a few other people around here are too."

Because there were no clean fights, and no clean enemies, and for all you wanted, _had_ to trust in the people holding the line beside you, it was still nice, every time, when this time you weren't betrayed. When this time they stood, and held alongside you. 

It was always nice, when this time the hard choices fell in your favour.

"... Yes, sir," Meroe answered, with that stiff, formal cadence of his that Nick half-suspected was their primary disguise. Stark's AI, who were so much more than they pretended. "And Commander? I think ... we are glad we made that choice too. For whatever that is worth in return."

... More than should be allowed, Nick thought. Less than we want it to be, when the hard choices have to be made regardless. But more than necessity demanded, and more than any of them would admit.

As he said. It was always nice, not to be the one betrayed.


End file.
